Many different vendors provide Internet protocol (IP) telephones. Each vendor's IP telephones generally operate according to proprietary command sets that differ from command sets provided by other vendors. Further, each vendor's IP telephones may provide a control interface for receiving commands according to extensible markup language (XML) or the like, but these control interfaces are likewise generally vendor-specific. At present, when testing IP telephones of different vendors, mechanisms are lacking for controlling the IP telephones through a common interface or according to a common test script.